Across the Urals—Into Siberia—The Treimen waiting-prison—First exiles—The journey to Tobolsk—Secret night meeting of politicals—Hardships of exile—Splendid personnel of prisoners—Forced into daily contact with foul disease—Starvation—Life among the Ostiaks—Lack of medical aid—Siberia, a monumental crime—The journey back.
FA held little to interest me, so that after only a brief pause I continued my journey east to Cheliabinsk, the western terminal of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It had not originally been my intention to traverse Siberia. European Russia I did want to cover thoroughly, but when I found myself here on the edge of Asia, within a night’s ride of the “land of lost leaders,” I felt justified in making an excursion far enough over the border to bring me to the nearest places of exile, where I could meet and talk with men and women whom Russia had expelled. Instead of pursuing the line of the Trans-Siberian road, however, I decided to follow the old route used by exiles in the days when no railroad penetrated even to the borders of Siberia. To reach this port it was necessary for me to go north from Cheliabinsk, along the ridge of the Ural Mountains, and down into Yekaterinburg, a famous mining-center, and the starting-point of a short railroad line running to Tyumen, the most northerly point reached by railroad in Siberia.
From Cheliabinsk to Yekaterinburg was one long day’s journey. Autumn was already descending upon the land and the trees were tossing their dried and brown leaves over the steep slopes of the hills into the valleys below, where a lingering green still carpeted the earth.
From Yekaterinburg to Tyumen is a night’s journey. When the first light of dawn creeps into the car window and one realizes that day will presently reveal the melancholy wastes of the dreariest country on earth, a little of the meaning of that sinister name—Siberia—possesses one, and the desolate miles of waste and marsh country seem to hold a weird fascination.
The same train that brought me to Tyumen carried a party of exiles in the prison-car ahead—a car ironclad, with small square windows to receive the light—windows crossed by iron bars. At the station I watched the gendarmes forming their charges into line, preparatory to the first stage of their long walk. Most of these prisoners were strikingly ill-clad for a Siberian expedition. Several had no hats, while only one or two had overcoats. A representative of the revolutionary Red Cross Society—himself an exile—was on hand to make note of these things. Of him I inquired the reason why these prisoners were so inadequately clothed. He laughed at my ingenuousness, and told me that recently a party of fifty had come in, most of whom were clad in their underclothes, with an old army coat over for decency’s sake. Sometimes men are arrested in the dead of night, torn from their beds without time to dress, but often it happens that a man will sit for months in a local prison, and then, suddenly one night, he will be hurried from his cell to join the party about to start for Siberia. There is no time to dress nor to collect his possessions. The worst feature of this treatment is that the government usually makes no ultimate effort to make good this loss. Therefore the exiles have been obliged to organize a relief committee among themselves, with underground[19] connections with the outside world, to make provisions for the neglected and ill-clad new-comers whom the government so mercilessly deserts upon their arrival in this region of long winter and incredible cold.
The exile whom we found taking notes of the needs of arriving prisoners was immeasurably delighted when we spoke to him. His home was one of the university cities of south Russia, where he had been the editor of a local newspaper. Because of something he had written the wrath of the governor of the province was brought down upon him, and he had been exiled to Siberia for five years. At the beginning he was sent to a settlement several hundred miles to the north, but through influential friends in St. Petersburg he had been given permission to return to Tyumen, which is a distinctly more habitable place than a remote settlement of half-civilized Ostiaks. He invited us to visit him in his lodgings, and promised to introduce us to several other political exiles who were living in so-called “free” exile in Tyumen, and to supply us with letters of introduction to various people that would be helpful to us in Tobolsk.
When, later in the day, we climbed to his attic-room I was struck by the atmosphere of refinement that was somehow conveyed in the simple furnishings of the
